…a lifestyle blog telling the stories that make up my life with five girls and one boy and a husband who tags along.

Category Archives: holidays

Last year I wrote an article for Inland 360 about Hanukkah and what my friend Rachel taught me. I’ve always been interested in Jewish traditions despite not being Jewish myself. Since moving to Portland, my interest is even more. I’ve made many friends who are Jewish and watching them as they celebrate the new year and Hanukkah makes me want to be a part of it. And no, I’m not converting. If I’m being honest, I’m in a bit of a religion break at the moment. Faith can be a tricky thing sometimes.

(I’ve been made fun of for this, and say what you want. I don’t mind.)

I’m so thankful for friends who invite us into their lives and don’t think we’re weird or strange for wanting to learn and take part.

I’m even more thankful for friends who do things like throw my kids a Hanukkah party . DUDE. Jenna is amazing. My kids absolutely adore her and Isaac is just as good. They put SO much time and effort into an incredible day and my kids had a blast.

(there’s me and Jenna)

She made latkes and donuts.

We played dreidel and ate our weight in gelt.

We made menorahs and learned a couple prayers.

It was the best time.

Do you know what it feels like to start over? To move somewhere completely new and put yourself out there, hoping someone will accept you and your family with all your quirks and weirdness but all your love and authenticity too? I know a lot of people know exactly what it feels like but we are experiencing this really strange and scary feeling for the first time. In the last couple months there have been friendships that haven’t carried over from our valley life to our Portland life and while that might make me really sad, I’m able to look at our Portland life and see the amazing people we’ve met here. Jenna and Isaac, who are always happy to see us, hug our kids, and be there when things might be hectic or hard. Mitch and Molly and baby Max who are so kind and friendly and always make our days happier. Chad who is freaking hilarious and freaking fun and just a solid friend. So many more.

I remember thinking to myself before moving, “I’m just going to not make any friends because it never turns out the way I think it should and I end up being sad no matter how hard I try. Remedy: no friends.”

That didn’t happen, I made friends. Really great ones.

Being here reminds me that the world is really big, something that was easy to forget before. It reminds me that things work out even when people doubt you and your choices and that happiness is more than a paycheck and a big house. Our little neighborhood is full of different people of different colors and different faiths and different sizes of paychecks and no one cares one bit. To me, that’s important.

There’s that guy who walks his husky and hates our Italian Greyhound. I’m not sure he really likes us much.

But other than that, we feel connected to the people here. We feel the vibe and if that sounds weird to you, maybe you haven’t found yours yet.

Charlotte is each and every one of the following at any given time of day:

fierce

quiet

patient

kind

sassy

loud

snuggly

chill

creative

cheerful

wiggly

Charlotte is so many things at so many different times of the day or week and sometimes lots of things at once. She is smart and she is SO. FREAKING. HILARIOUS. If you look too deep in her eyes, she’ll keep you there, so be careful. She’s striking, the epitome of fashion and her androgynous style and the way she pulls it off is pretty rad.

She’s our number four, our loudest girl, the most daring and the most confident. She is a really good friend and she’s such a sweet soul – she’s empathetic towards others’ situations and sometimes she catches me by surprise with the way she understands some really hard things.

She’s named after one of our favorite people and his spirit shows through her all the time. She’s fun and she’s full of stories and she wants to be friends with everyone.

Without Charlotte, our lives would be quieter and more boring. We’d laugh a little less and we’d probably use 1/2 as many Bandaids.

Happiest, happiest of days to our sweet, fun, and sassy Charlotte Clayton.

For the past couple years, we’ve avoided the ping pong-ing of going from house to house to egg hunt to egg hunt because it’s just too much. Instead, we host Easter brunch at our house after we’ve done our own family thing.

Our own family thing consists of Easter baskets and an inside egg hunt where some eggs are more easily found than others.

We don’t go crazy on baskets. They’re even more simplified than Christmas stockings. Lots of candy, a couple toys, a book, that kind of thing. Each of the little girls got a doll. I think we nailed it as far as the quality vs. quantity.

After some time with the baskets, they hunt. And then they celebrate. (James chose not to participate this year)

(I wanna know what goes on in that smart little brain of his)

And then, after all that fun just by ourselves, we invite more awesome people to come over to eat like crazy and have even more fun!

Maria serenaded us with some violin, too.

We had a little quiet time and then decided to go to the skatepark.

Okay, so why is it that parents think it’s okay to just drop their little kids off at the skatepark with their new scooters and rip sticks and leave them there, where they don’t take turns, they cut people off, and make it a mess for scooter-ers and skaters who actually wanna ride and know what they’re doing. It drives me nuts. And when they do get in the way and cause a collision, and the parent is there, the parent does nothing. Like…literally nothing. So we had to deal with it. Which meant doing nothing, because when you try to tell 9-year-olds that they should take turns so they don’t get hurt, they look at you like you’re a complete idiot. So Luke kept getting SUPER frustrated and Jamie kept pretending to throw up (it’s a tactic he’s been using to get us to leave somewhere in a hurry…he wasn’t actually throwing up, more like very dramatically coughing and spitting) and Franci wouldn’t quit screaming (she was coloring in the car, literally feet from the park with all doors open, we could hear her and talk to her, but she wasn’t happy with it) so we bagged it and headed home for some quiet time and a bike ride.

I’m beyond tired and I don’t think I’m ready for the work week. But it’s weird how it comes whether you are ready or not, huh?

I am not patient. I am a great teacher’s helper because I can cut things out like a mofo and I’m so good at making copies. I can even sit with kids for 10 minutes at a time and I’m pretty good. But put me in charge of teaching young children to do something or facilitating arts and crafts for a mess of them and I turn into a nightmare.

“Uhhhh, just let me do that.”

“Don’t touch that. Why’d you do that?! That’s not how you’re supposed to do that. Are trees really purple? Uhhh….why don’t you go wash your hands. Also…you have snot coming out of your nose.”

So making Christmas cookies with my children was a lesson in patience and I think I’d give myself a C.

I let them decorate four cookies each and they were the burned ones.

Man, theirs were just messes.

But let’s talk about mine because mine were freaking incredible.

Yep, I did it. I spelled out JOY. That did not define the experience of decorating Christmas cookies with my children, but Joy to the World, man.

Okay, I’m just kidding. I’m 90% kidding. Okay, I’m 60% kidding.

Making cookies with the kids was not as awful as I thought it would be, even though I would still give myself a C grade because I have got to mellow out. Next time, I’ll earn a B. But I’m giving myself extra credit and raising my grade to a C+ because of this:

This Thanksgiving we took a little time out. Dan and I have both been going and going and going. I’ve been out of town more often than I ever have been in the last few months and we have meetings or commitments almost every single night of the week, not exaggerating. We normally host Thanksgiving and I never mind it. I like being busy with something fun: getting a table decorated, planning food, arranging seats, that kind of thing.

Since starting work (I go in four days a week after I drop kids off until it’s time to pick them up again) and Green Apple Project as well as other little side things (Inland 360 which you should go check out because Charlotte is front and center, Lego League, Bunco, etc) I find myself not having a lot of downtime.

Before you think I’m complaining, you should know something. When I have too much downtown, I start to worry. I obsess over things, I get extremely anxious, and it’s not healthy for me. I need to be busy in order to stay sane and I’m only 1/4 kidding.

Sometimes, though, a time out is necessary so this year we took our time out at the beach.

It wasn’t beautiful like this every day. Actually, it poured buckets most of the time, but that didn’t stop us from enjoying every second of it. We took (wet) walks on the beach, gathered seashells, and cozied up in our hotel room.

The kids were so good. They watched DVDs in the car on the way over and got along while we were there. We really lucked out with them when it comes to traveling. I suppose they finally realized we like to always do adventures so there is no sense fighting it.

But they even let me take photos of them and cooperated beautifully.

My love for Hanna jams runs deep.

My parents were there and so was Josh. Tracy and Nate and Abbey joined in, too, so it was basically the best time ever.

Another October, another trip to the pumpkin patch. Thank GOD the kids get to go with their classes because taking six children to a muddy pumpkin patch and having to tell them a million times that one is too big or rotten isn’t fun. But being a chaperone with a teacher and her class is awesome.

[I seem to have the ability to create bad weather for any event, so of course it was wet and muddy]

Charlotte is pleased as punch when any routine gets interrupted, so this was just a perfect day for her.

One of the farmers, Joe, showed the kids around. And while Joe was very nice I think perhaps this should be his last time manning a group of 5 year olds around a site that has lots of hard rules to follow.

It’s hard to listen when there are puddles to jump in and worms to wrangle.

But finally the tours were over and it was pumpkin hunting time: the best time of all.

They tasted some farm-made cider, ate some apples and pears, and in 45 minutes the field trip was over. Perfect.

Before I left, I snuck into the store and got some apples and caramel – you can guess what I’m doing today.

I’d like to preface this post by telling all of you that I had kind of forgotten about Halloween until my kids dragged the boxes (why do we have multiple boxes?!) of Halloween decorations up from the basement and begged me to let them decorate. There’s no forgetting Halloween now.

In previous years, I may have constructed clever family or sibling costumes, organized giant kid Halloween parties and maybe even snuck an adult party in there, too. This year, the kids are choosing their own costumes and I don’t even care. The annual Halloween party? I’m really just swapping out Lego League (ooooh, that’s a post on its own) for Halloween party and cutting our previous guest list by 2/3rds. Apparently I’m a giant party pooper.

But Jamie is prepping for Halloween. He isn’t a fan of dressing up for it which is odd because he’s been known to rock a king’s cape for hours and he’s sported a queen’s dress or two. But nope, he doesn’t like Halloween costumes which is why he’s chosen to be a paper boy this year because it just requires that he “finds a satchel to stuff newspapers in…comics.”

Jamie is most interested in the candy he’ll be raking in and has realized that his very lazy lifestyle means he won’t be on top of his game as far as the amount of ground he can cover. But he has a solution.

“Alright, so I just need to put some sneakers on and, starting this week, walk around the block a few times. As Halloween gets closer, I’ll walk longer and longer so that when it’s actually here, I’ll be able to walk a really long way without getting too tired and get so much candy.”